Jeremiah Wilson. He founded Convirza over 15 years ago. As the patent-holding inventor of The Maculon, the original, passive, remote conversation monitoring device and sales management system, he shaped the call tracking and marketing analytics industry. He’s positioned the capital raises and recent acquisition.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – 48 Laws of Power
What CEO do you follow? – N/A
Favorite online tool? — Salesforce App
How many hours of sleep do you get? — 6
If you could let your 20-year old self know one thing, what would it be? – “I wished I believed in myself more”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:51 – Nathan introduces Jeremiah to the show
02:22 – Convirza acquired a portion of their competitor’s assets to expand their customer base
02:56 – Jeremiah shares how they found out about the acquisition
03:29 – Call tracking is what drives the calls
04:00 – Convirza also listens to the calls with machine learning to check the quality of the call
- 04:46 – If a phrase that the sales agent used didn’t drive conversion, it should be changed
05:00 – Convirza tracks the attribution rate
06:20 – Convirza finds out which billboard led a prospect to call, the cost of the billboard and the actual sales made from those calls
06:54 – Convirza only focuses on where the lead came from and the conversation itself
- 07:01 – “Our objective is strictly the audio, strictly the call”
07:54 – Convirza is a SaaS business and charges a platform fee plus minutes
08:13 – ACV is around $600K
- 08:40 – ACV is per business
09:27 – Prior to Convirza, Jeremiah was a national trainer for a company in Ohio and was teaching people how to sell on the phone
- 10:35 – In 2000, salespeople were looking into live call recordings
- 11:20 – Jeremiah set-up the stick and the device that could plug into a computer and record calls
- 12:00 – Jeremiah started with 100 units which cost him $70K
12:20 – Convirza was launched in 2001
13:30 – Convirza had their first client within six months that paid $20K
13:47 – 2010 revenue is $3M
14:05 – Convirza listened to their clients in order to improve their product
14:17 – Convirza has raised $24M in total
- 14:46 – The investors are private investors
15:55 – Convirza has over a thousand customers
16:09 – Convirza has 50K unique businesses using them
16:42 – 2017 ARR goal is $10M
17:33 – Gross logo churn is 3%
17:44 – Convirza has been focused on having their net negative churn negative for the last 2 years
18:56 – Team size is 66 with 7 in sales and 25 as engineers
- 19:21 – They have a team of 40 in India who are augmented in their engineering
19:47 – Convirza has an office in Utah and California
20:08 – Pre-acquisition CAC is $1200
21:00 – From the acquisition, they gained around 500 customers (more than double of what they had)
21:23 – LTV is 4 years
21:41 – Convirza’s best source for customers is their webinars
- 21:52 – They partnered with similar associations and publications in the space to promote their webinars
22:54 – Payback period is 9 months
22:18 – Paid spend was around $6500 in July 2017
24:01 – Gross margin is 60%
24:24 – Convirza built their own platform
26:05 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Acquire a part of your competitor’s assets to grow your own business and customer base.
Having another team in another country can be your secret key to success.
Focus on one specific goal at a time.

Resources Mentioned:

843: SaaS: Call Tracking Convirza on $10m ARR, Major Acquisition to Double Business

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders